Carrots not Sticks

A NIACE response to the consultation of the Social Security Advisory Committee on:
The Social Security (Literacy etc. Skills Training Pilot) Regulations 2001

Response Published : June 2001

Introduction

1. NIACE is pleased to respond to the Advisory Committee’s consultation on the above proposals. Raising the basic skills levels of adults is an important priority for public policy and we welcome the commitment made by government, through the framework set out in ‘Skills for Life’, to improve the literacy and numeracy skills of 750,000 adults by 2004 and the commitment of £1.5 billion over the next three years. We are concerned, however, that the imposition of benefit sanctions represents neither a necessary nor an effective lever for change and are actively unhelpful in redressing the nation’s basic skills problem.

2. The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (England and Wales) is a registered charity and company limited by guarantee. NIACE is also a voluntary organisation. In addition to individual members, the membership includes every local authority’s adult and community education service and more than 200 further corporate members drawn from across the whole post-16 education spectrum (including colleges, universities, broadcasting organisations and trade unions). NIACE’s broad aim is to advance the interests of adults as learners and as potential learners. Our strategic plan commits us to "support an increase in the total numbers of adults engaged in formal and informal learning in England and Wales; and at the same time to take positive action to improve opportunities and widen access to learning opportunities for those communities underrepresented in current provision". It seeks to do this through advocacy, research, development and consultancy work, conferences, publications and promotion.

3. NIACE works closely with government. Since 1997 we have managed (or jointly managed with organisations such as the Basic Skills Agency or LSDA) a number of relevant initiatives for the Department for Education and Employment. These include

Between 1997 and 2000, the organisation’s Director served as Vice-chair of the National Advisory Group for Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning and is currently a member of the Learning and Skills Council’s Adult Learning Committee. He is also the longest-serving board member of the Basic Skills Agency and its predecessor organisation, ALBSU. NIACE directly managed the first national agency for basic skills the Adult Literacy resource Agency, a forerunner of the BSA.

4. Until the publication of ‘Skills for Life’ (2001), basic skills policy for more than ten years has focussed primarily upon encouraging voluntary take-up of provision which has, since the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act, been free at the point of delivery. NIACE accepts entirely that the limitations of this approach are increasingly apparent and that more needs to be done.

5. We do not believe however that there is a need to pilot benefit sanctions among unemployed people before assessing the effectiveness of incentives.

6. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Manpower Services Commission ran a national programme of full-time Preparatory Courses under the Training Opportunities Scheme (TOPS, later the Job Training Scheme) which provided opportunities for participants, who did not have to be unemployed, to improve their basic literacy and numeracy skills. These courses paid participants a weekly training allowance and an adult dependents’ allowance and were over-subscribed. There would be considerable merit in re-visiting the contemporary evaluations of these courses which were swept away in 1985/86 by wider reforms intended to reverse a policy of "training for stock" and to run cheaper part-time courses for the adult unemployed at a time of high unemployment.

7. NIACE welcomes the proposal to pilot incentives that allow unemployed adults to address their basic skill needs without exposing themselves to financial risk. Incentives have considerable potential to encourage adults, through the use of modest rewards, to acknowledge literacy or numeracy difficulties which they may well otherwise wish to remain concealed and which, at the end of the day, might reasonably be regarded as private matters rather than the concern of the state.

8. Without denying that a relationship between unemployment and lower levels of basic skills exists, the argument that the former is caused by the latter is a contestable assumption.

There is an economic argument that low skill levels in the UK may be due as much to a failure of demand among employers for higher levels as to any failure of individual demand: In short, for some people in a labour market, competing for low-skill jobs which do not require higher levels of literacy and numeracy may be a rational strategy. So long as this is so, a case can be made for incentives to change behaviour and raise aspiration – but not for sanctions. So long as jobs exist in the UK which do not require high levels of literacy or numeracy, there is a moral case to be argued that unemployed people should not be penalised for failing to aspire to higher level jobs. An analogy makes the point: It is right for the government to promote healthier lifestyles but it would be wrong for social security regulations to penalise benefit claimants who choose not to take regular exercise!

9. By definition, the people with lower levels of basic skills, at whom benefit sanctions will be targeted, are those who have benefited least from their initial education experience as children. These are individuals who are likely not to have found formal education valuable in the past. It is difficult to imagine, therefore, why an element of sanction will prove more attractive or will change this attitude.

10. While there might be an argument that sanctions can modify behaviour through training (for example, basic time management) there is no evidence that adults can be forced to improve their literacy or numeracy ability against their will. (It should be noted that among the people targeted may be many who were subjected while younger to repeated physical chastisement for their supposed inability to learn).

11. Threat of financial sanctions may ensure the attendance of claimants on courses. It does not mean however that they will or can achieve and progress. Compulsion also means that they may be ill-disposed towards learning and towards teachers quite apart from any negative feelings and low self-esteem that may result from the disclosure of their difficulties. This, of course, will not make for a calm, stress-free, environment conductive to learning. For these and other reasons, the opportunity costs of using resources in this way appear to NIACE to be far greater potentially than those associated with piloting more and different incentive measures

Conclusion

12. The reason why adults have basic skills difficulties is due to failings in the school system. Sanctions would penalise individuals for failures that are not of their making.

June 2001
NIACE
21 De Montfort Street
Leicester LE1 7GE

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Related Links

To see how this issues was debated in parliament, please follow the links below

House of Commons Debate
(http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmstand/deleg8/st010716/10716s01.htm)

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